“Are you sure?”
In answer, I squeezed my thighs that were straddled on either side of him before I recaptured his mouth.
I’d missed this. The feeling of belonging. And I was too selfish to tell him no.
He leaned forward, causing me to gently fall backward on the bed as he climbed over me. His hands fanned my hair out around me as he looked down at me. There was a vein in his forehead that throbbed, and I reached a hand up so I could rub my thumb over it.
“Trista,” he said before pressing his lips against mine. “I’ve missed,” he said, moving his lips to my jaw and up to my ear. “You,” he breathed against my earlobe before he nuzzled his face into my neck and kissed a line down to my collarbone.
I couldn’t speak. He was leaving a trail of goose bumps in the wake of his kisses, making my whole body itch to grab every single part of him, just to feel his skin under my hands so that I wouldn’t forget this, forget him.
His fingers slid down the column of my throat and I tilted my head back to give him more room as his lips followed his fingers’ trail. Slowly, he began unbuttoning the flannel shirt I wore. With each passing second, more of my skin was being revealed and I fought the urge to shiver—not from the cold, but from the anticipation of being with Jude again this way. With one hand, he unbuttoned the shirt and the other dragged down my chest with each new inch of skin that was exposed. I sucked in a breath, feeling it fill my lungs, when he had the last button undone and pushed the sides of my shirt away from my chest. All I wore under the shirt was a bra, but Jude climbed over me and kissed me again instead of unclasping the bra.
His lips just rested against mine for a minute, a touch that was more intimate than a kiss, as we breathed one another’s air. My hands went to his shirt and, with my eyes closed and Jude nibbling my lower lip gently, I began to undo each button as he had done to me. I wanted his skin on mine, I wanted to expose him the way he’d exposed me. When the last button was undone, Jude wrapped his arms under me and pulled me up so that my ass was on his upper thighs, straddling him, and we were upright on the bed.
I met his eyes when my hands slid up his torso, feeling all that hard muscle under my fingertips. I stopped at his shoulders, my fingers curling over his muscles underneath the shirt. Slowly, I drew my hands down so that the opened shirt began to slide down his shoulders and off of his arms.
The room was dark, but my hands saw everything my eyes couldn’t see. Skin met ink and met skin again, all across his chest and arms, and part of me wished to have the patience to lay him down and explore every inch, a luxury I hadn’t afforded myself in the last year.
Interrupting my perusal, Jude cupped my jaw and kissed me firmly on the mouth. My nails dug into his shoulders, holding him as firmly as he held me. When he pulled back, he was breathing heavily and that rush of warmth washed over my neck, making me want to writhe in his arms. My shirt hung open, covering just my arms and back. With one hand, he pulled my hair so that it tugged my face back, once again exposing my neck to him. His lips turned hungry, with a nip here and there as they followed the curve of my neck to my shoulder. I was burning from the inside, the heat spreading to all my appendages. How strange it was, to feel that burning and want to chase it for as long as you could.
“Kiss me,” he said, cradling my head to lift it again, because I felt so weak from sensation that I wasn’t sure I could hold it up myself.
I slid my hands into his hair and dragged my nails down his scalp as my lips met his. Over and over, we licked, we teased, we nibbled until I was sure one of us would combust.
He climbed off the bed, but yanked me gently to him so that my arms wrapped around his neck and my legs around his waist. He carried me over to the low dresser where the TV sat and set me on it gently before he switched on the lamp light.
“No,” I quickly protested, searching for the power button.
“Yes,” he said, clasping my searching hand in his and bringing it to his mouth. “I don’t want to be in the dark,” he said between kissing each of my knuckles.
His eyes were heavy-lidded, and that vein in his forehead had softened a little, so I agreed—because I didn’t want him to stop touching me, self-consciousness be damned.
After kissing my last knuckle, he yanked on the sleeve of my shirt and pulled it off of one arm before repeating the process on the other one. The flannel fell, leaving me in only my bra and my lounge pants.
He pressed a hand to my torso, just over the curve of my breast, and I looked down to see his one hand spanning most of me. And then he leaned down and kissed me again. It was like he couldn’t stop kissing me, and I didn’t want him to.
My body rocked into his as he leaned over me and I pushed against him so I could stand in front of him. Slowly, I tucked my thumbs into my lounge pants and tugged them down. My impatient hands reached for his sweats, but he stopped me, turning me back around so that I lay back on the bed, my legs hanging over the side. I propped up on my elbows, watching him watch me. His back was now to the lamp, so it illuminated the space around him, like a shadow looming in front of me. I reached for his pants again, but he stopped me by leaning over me and sliding his hands behind my back to my bra. Before I could think, he had it unclasped and pushed me gently down so he could slide the straps off my arms. I breathed heavily underneath him and knew my breasts were rising and falling in time with my breaths.
“Trista. You’re so beautiful. Always.” He looked down at me with such tenderness on his face that I couldn’t believe someone could admire me that much—just thinking it made me hurt deeper than I knew he could touch.
Leaning over me, he slid a hand along the curve of my waist until it stopped just below the curve of one breast. With his eyes locked on mine, he slid his thumb gently along the underside of that curve, and then brushed his fingers over my pebbled nipple. I arched under him from the lightning bolt of heat that speared through me from such a simple touch. When he repeated the motion on the other side, I had to stop myself from pulling him down. I was trying to go slow, at his pace, but my body was impatient to be touched, to be filled, by him.
He pressed a kiss to the center of my chest and then rubbed his face over my nipple, so the bite of his stubble sent me into sensation overload. I propped up on my elbows again, just so I could watch him. He took my breast into his mouth and I felt the flat part of his tongue run along it.
“Jude,” I said, knowing my voice sounded a little desperate.
But he didn’t say anything, didn’t even seem to acknowledge his name as he moved to my other nipple, laving it with his tongue and then sucking it into his mouth as he met my eyes. His hands were braced on either side of me on the bed and, needing a place to touch, I reached my hands up and clawed at his arms—not roughly—but enough so he would feel my impatience.
His mouth moved down my chest and his palms covered my breasts, squeezing gently, as he nibbled on the skin just below my belly button. Sparks of pleasure made stars dance behind my eyelids as I dropped from my elbows to the bed. When I felt his warm breath hit my center, I wanted to buck under him. It was like my legs were operated by some unseen being, because they wrapped around him before dropping when his finger slid under the elastic of my panties and rubbed gently along me.
It was a slow kind of torture, the way his fingers traced my opening but didn’t dip into it. One of his hands gripped my inner thigh while his other explored. It was almost painful, the way he circled around me, but didn’t completely touch me.
“Jude,” I said again, this time while panting. “Please.” I wasn’t sure what I was asking for, but when I had the strength to open my eyes, I met his right between my legs. It was so deliciously intimate, having him looking up at me from that angle while I was basically a slave to his hands. I opened my mouth to say his name again, but it came out garbled when he slid one finger in and pumped me twice.
I could’ve bucked off the bed high enough to hit the ceiling. It was the first time a man had touched me si
nce the last time the same man had touched me—one year before. He was reawakening all my pleasure sensors, and even though his pace was slow, it felt like an overload of sensory input. He pumped me a couple more times before I practically cried his name.
He stood and pushed his sweats down, revealing that he wore no underwear. I don’t know why that was so sexy to me, the fact that he’d been commando this whole time. He walked around, completely naked, to his backpack and retrieved a condom. Watching him stand there as he slid it on only made me want to launch up off the bed and onto him.
So I did. “Now,” I said against his mouth as his hands lifted my ass so that I was in line with him.
“Are you ready?” he asked against my mouth.
“God, yes,” I said as our teeth clashed and he slid right into me.
He held me there for a second and I opened my eyes, meeting his heavy-lidded, almost sleepy ones. But then he began to move and I felt myself being laid back onto the bed as he thrust into me, over and over, the pace slow but climbing faster. With each push, I slid a little bit further across the bed. Finally, his chest met mine and I got to experience his full weight on me—something I’d wanted for so long. I felt myself climbing with each inch I slid across the bed, but when he put his hand between us and touched me, it was suddenly too much, too strong, and my legs jerked under his.
“It’s okay,” he whispered as he moved faster. I opened my eyes, seeing his concentration on mine. It was so deeply intimate, the way he was looking right through all my bullshit, deep down to who I was, that when I felt his arms at my sides clench, I closed my eyes to ride out my high, biting down on my lip to keep from yelling.
He tugged my lip from my teeth just as a groan wrenched itself from the back of my throat and he grunted from above me, his pace quickening right at the end of our highs.
I couldn’t move for several long seconds. The only place that seemed to move was my chest, rising and falling in time with his breaths. But we remained silent, the two of us, just clinging to each other as we gathered our energy.
His face was tucked in my neck and I felt him press a gentle kiss there before he stood. I winced when he pulled completely away from me, but otherwise I stayed still.
He stood over me, looking down at me. There were few things etched in my memory, but this was one: his hair a mess; his warm, sleepy eyes focused; his bare chest heaving heavy breaths. “Hi,” he said, causing me to curve my lips.
“Hi,” I said back. I felt sated, and in a strange way, whole. I’d been in Jude’s company for a couple days, but it wasn’t until then that I’d felt it so deeply. Like the gouge in my heart was being filled up again.
“I’m going to get dressed, and then I’m going to grab us some ice cream from the vending machines.”
I nodded, smiling when his lips spread. “’Kay.”
After he left, making sure to drop a kiss to my lips before he stepped out the door, I rubbed a fist over my chest. So much had changed. But so much was still the same.
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning, I awoke curled up in Jude’s embrace, the weight of his arm around my waist. It was a welcome weight, something I’d missed.
I felt him breathing against the nape of my neck and I closed my eyes once again. I was safe. I felt whole.
I hadn’t puked in more than twenty-four hours.
“I feel like I’m going to break you,” he whispered against my neck.
“You can’t,” I whispered back.
“I worry I might, from holding you tightly.” He kissed my skin and then nuzzled against me. “So tight you can’t leave this time.”
I nuzzled against him. “How can you break me?” I asked, running my fingers over his, “When I finally feel whole?”
He squeezed me tighter then, as if he was no longer worried about breaking me as much as he worried about me slipping from his grasp. “We should get going,” he finally said, after we’d stayed in the silence for long enough. “We have to hit up your grandfather and then, your mom?”
“Yeah,” I said, but my heart wasn’t up for the second visit I’d need to make.
“It’ll be okay. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
I nodded and then slipped out of the bed, grabbing a pair of jeans from my bag. “Might as well get it over with before we go back to Colorado.”
Jude watched me get dressed for a moment, and this time I didn’t feel the same anguish I’d felt when he’d visited me in Maine. “I’ll just check in on Colin and then I’ll be ready to go.”
Thirty minutes later, we had checked out of the motel and started back up on the road. Grandpa’s assisted living facility was set back a bit in a wooded area, a large brick building that looked out of place among all the log cabins and vinyl-sided manufactured homes in the neighborhood.
Grandpa’s room was clean, which was something I was grateful for. I knew he must have had help with that, because his mobility was so limited. “Trista,” he said, his eyes crinkling in the corners when he saw me. “You brought a friend.”
“Nice to see you again,” Jude said, crouching down so he was eye level with my grandpa at the table. “It’s Jude.”
“I remember,” Grandpa said, inviting him to take a seat. “I take it you found my girl?”
I thought about the postcard the year before. “He did,” I said as I bent down and wrapped my arms around him. He was thinner than he’d been when I’d last seen him, but his color was good and high in his cheeks. He looked healthy, happy, and I wished I’d come sooner. “Are you okay, Trista?” he asked as his hands held mine and he looked me up and down.
I rubbed a thumb over his paper-thin skin and gave him a reassuring smile. “I’m better,” I said, knowing that was really all he needed to know.
“Well, take a seat. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
I sat in the chair next to Jude and felt fractionally stronger when he laid his arm over the back of my chair. “Well, as you know, I ended up at this inn in Maine, when my car was on its last leg.”
“Where in Maine?”
“Southern. Near the New Hampshire border.”
Grandpa rubbed his chin, where he had a very trim beard coming in. “Interesting. How do you like it?”
“It’s great,” I said without forcing it. “My boss is like a protective mom, and I’m a few-minutes walk from the beach.”
“What else have you been doing?” Grandpa asked.
I tried to think of what I’d done since I’d gone to Maine, but couldn’t come up with anything outside of my day-to-day work at the inn and my walks around the town.
“We’re going to hike up a mountain next week,” Jude said.
I stared at him for a moment, not aware of the plans he was making.
“Oh yeah? Where at?”
“Not sure yet. I figured we’d open a map and close our eyes before we picked it out. It’s more exciting that way.” I still continued to stare at Jude, until I felt his hand on my thigh, giving me a reassuring squeeze.
“That sounds great, Trista. Oh, to be young enough to do all of those things.” Grandpa patted his chest and sighed. “I used to do things like that as a youngin’. Been a long time since I held that mountain air in my lungs.”
“We’ll bottle some up for you and bring it back,” Jude said with a soft smile. I covered the hand he held on my thigh with my own and squeezed, grateful for his support.
“What else do you have going on?”
“Outside of the inn, I’m not sure what else I have going on, Grandpa.”
“That’s okay. As long as you’re doing the things that make you happy, that’s all I really want for you. It’s good to see you so content, Trista.”
I felt Jude’s eyes boring into my face, but I just kept my eyes on my grandpa. The fact that this was the happiest I’d been in two years wasn’t something I wanted to dissect right now.
“And it’s good to just see you, Gramps. I wish I had come back sooner, I really do.”
He waved a hand at me. “I don’t need to see you in the flesh to feel that you still miss me, dear granddaughter of mine. I just need you to call once in a while, maybe send me more snail mail.” He pointed a thumb to the wall that separated his little apartment from the one next door. “Over there’s Ted, and if you beg my pardon, he’s kind of a wet blanket. So when I get those letters, he thinks I’ve got some long distance love and it makes him a little bit jealous.”
I laughed. “If only he knew they were only from your granddaughter.”
“Only?” he barked. “Don’t say that about yourself, dear girl.” He reached a hand across the table and patted mine. “I am glad you’ve come though. And I guess you’ll be off to see your mom after I let you go?”
A knot formed in my stomach. I wish it was easy to shake my mom from my life, but I felt like I wanted to at least see how she was doing. If she was getting better. If for nothing else but my grandfather’s sake. “Yeah, we’ll stop by on our way out of the city.”
“Good, good. I don’t like knowing my two favorite girls are at odds, but I can’t say I blame you, Trista. She was never easy on you.”
Jude was still watching me, like he was watching for the moment that the prospect of seeing my mom would register. Like I would crack under the weight of it. But I kept my smile plastered on my face the rest of the visit with Grandpa and hugged him hard when I left.
“Don’t forget to call me once in a while. And him,” he said, pointing a finger out where Jude waited in the hallway. “He loves you. Don’t take it for granted.”
We both knew what love had done to my mother, turning her into a whole other person when the love had walked out of her life.
“I love him too, but it’s complicated.”
“Who said love was uncomplicated?” He huffed. “All that matters is that you’re good to each other, and good for one another. It’s really that simple. And if it’s worth it, it’s worth holding on to.” He patted my hand and said, “I’d hate to see you suffer alone when you don’t need to.” “I don’t want to suffer,” I said. Sadness made me heavy, my voice strained.
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